Myths of Modern Medicine: The Increase in the Human Life Span.Our longer, healthier life span is due to a range of political social reforms, as described below. Medical interventions and commercial drug products had very little impact.
Medical products contributed little to increasing the human life span:For instance, "Researchers John & Sonya McKinlay... showed that medical intervention only accounted for between 1 & 3.5 per cent of the increase in the average life span in the United States since 1900." [1] (Yes you read that correctly, just one to three point five percent.) Similarly, in the words of Dr Richard Taylor, in Australia: "almost 80 per cent of the reduction in infant mortality between the 1880s & the 1970s occurred prior to the 1930s." [2] That is, survival rates for infants increased steadily long before the widespread use of pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines designed to combat infectious diseases. Extensive vaccination did not begin in Australia until the mid-1930s and for many diseases did not commence until the 1950s and 1960s. This pattern is duplicated across the developed world. Social reforms brought about the increase in healthy human life span:In the words of medical historian Hans Ruesch: "All the medical historians of our century ... agree that the decline of the epidemics which had wrought havoc in the Middle Ages was not due to the introduction of vaccination, but of hygiene, for they had diminished long before large-scale inoculations had begun..." [3] Medical historians explain that the great advances in human health like:
are due to reforms that improved our living conditions - via improvements to our social infrastructure. [4,5,6,7] Consider that almost everyone used to live surrounded by rubbish and raw sewerage; ideal conditions for disease. Humans (in developed countries) now live longer healthier lives due to these kinds of reforms during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: [4,5,7]
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~ ~ ~ ~ ~ In sum, the commercial pharmaceutical industry does not deserve the credit for benefits which came from social and political reforms. Most medical interventions lack scientific evidence:In closing, the British Medical Journal reports: "Only about 15% of medical interventions are supported by solid scientific evidence... This is partly because only 1% of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound and partly because many treatments have never been assessed at all". [10]
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For information on studies that show how modern medicine is a leading cause of human death and injury, see:
References:[1] J.B. McKinlay & S. McKinlay, Health & Society, Millibank Memorial Fund, 1977, pp.405-28 (as cited in The Pharmaceutical Drug Racket Part 1, CAFMR, 1993 p.7, a two part 40-page booklet that exposes the drug industry; see http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/online/research/index.html for excerpts). [2] Dr. Richard Taylor, Medicine out of Control, 1979 p.9, Sun books. [3] Hans Ruesch, Slaughter of the Innocent, CIVITAS Publications, Hartsdale NY, 1991, page 194. [4] T. McKeown, The Role of Medicine, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1979; T. McKeown and C.R. Lowe, An Introduction to Social Medicine, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1976 (both cited in The Pharmaceutical Drug Racket Part 1, Jon Lesso, CAFMR, 1993 p.7, a two part 40-page booklet that exposes the drug industry; see http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/online/research/index.html for excerpts). [5] Robert Sharpe, The Cruel Deception, Thorsons Publishing Group, Wellingborough, U.K. 1988, chapter 1, p.24 [6] A.M. Ramsay and R.T. Emond, Infectious Diseases, Heinemann, 1967. [7] Hans Ruesch, Slaughter of the Innocent, CIVITAS Publications, Hartsdale NY, 1991, pp. 147-287. [8] Irvine Loudon, "Maternal mortality in the past and its relevance to developing countries today", The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, July 2000 vol. 72 no. 1 241S-246S. [9] John Bowblis, "The Decline in Infant Death Rates, 1878–1913: The Role of Early Sickness Insurance Programs", The Journal of Economic History (2010),70:pp 221-232 [10] Richard Smith, editor, "Where is the wisdom?... The poverty of medical evidence", British Medical Journal, October 1991, Vol 303, 198-99, http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/334291/field_highwire_article_pdf/0.pdf
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For other articles - home pageRecommended Organisations:Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: Group of doctors, physicians and health practitioners promoting good health through real science. http://www.pcrm.org Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research (CAFMR): Archive of articles. Information that the pharmaceutical-chemical industry do not want us to know: medical history, medical fraud, psychiatric abuses, vaccination damage coverups, behind sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) etc. http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr Info on Vaccine damages, myths & alternatives:
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